Technology Innovation From Great Minds Around the Globe

When I became editor-in-chief of Discover magazine in the late 1990s, it was owned by the Walt Disney Co. CEO Michael Eisner. Michael had engineered the purchase of the magazine and was perhaps its most devoted reader.

Michael used to say that Disney was, yes, an entertainment company…

But far more importantly, it was a technology company.

At the time I was hired, Disney was going through a huge corporate push for diversity. Every hire I subsequently made was put through a process that sought a pool of candidates who weren’t only white males. I was put through “diversity training,” and I became quite impressed with what it could achieve.

Disney foresaw a global market for its products long before many other corporations did.

It planned a theme park in China before other American corporations were willing to risk investing there…

And it realized that in order to be successful in a global market, it would have to see the world through many different cultures, not just the culture of Southern California.

I bring this up because at the same time I assumed the editorship of Discover, I started hanging around IBM’s research labs in Westchester County, just north of New York City.

The research culture of IBM and Disney’s diversity program are intertwined in an interesting way…

IBM’s commitment to research in today’s world stirs the memories of Disney’s search for diversification.

That’s because what started as a smattering of IBM labs in the United States in the 1990s has exploded into 12 huge research centers around the globe, each with multiple centers.

IBM research is global, and its personnel tend to reflect the diversity of cultures on Earth. The only continent IBM doesn’t have a major research center in now is Antarctica.

All of this is leading to an IBM that succeeds in developing artificial intelligence from great minds around the globe.

For instance, the company is full-tilt focused on making electronics function like biology, from truly biological chips to chips that are grouped together like brain cells and function like them.

IBM researchers from the company’s lab in Switzerland recently announced they have replicated one of the most difficult-to-reproduce functions in all of biology, but one that is simple for a brain neuron to do — spike.

When you touch a hot stove, neurons in your brain collect millions of new inputs from your fingertips — and then spike, sending out an urgent signal that causes you to remove your hand without even thinking about it.

That spiking function is simple and elegant but extremely difficult to mimic.

If you keep sending signal after signal to a neuron, slowly but surely, it will make sense of the data as a charge builds within it, and then at the precisely correct moment it fires off an electrical charge to other neurons — the spike.

IBM researchers in Switzerland have discovered not only how to replicate that neuronal function with remarkable new chips, but how to use it to interpret patterns that even many human brains can’t perceive in Big Data.

The researchers say their neuron-like chips can interpret the kind of Big Data found in weather statistics, Twitter feeds and the sort of information that will one day come from the Internet of Things.

They say that just one artificial neuron can detect meaningful patterns in those streams of binary data. Imagine what thousands can do.

The reason this is significant is that IBM’s approach to creating computer chips that mimic the brain means that it can dispense with the logic center/memory center communications that are so wasteful of both energy and time in state-of-the-art computers and their chips.

In today’s most advanced electronics, a logic processor has to access memory to process a function, and then the result has to go back to memory again to be stored. There’s incessant back-and-forth between memory and processor in computers today.

In a neural-based computer such as IBM is designing, the processor and storage are combined. Communications between storage and logic are replaced by connections between artificial neurons.

The recent findings prove that IBM’s leaders know what Disney’s Michael Eisner knew: that by harnessing diversity of input from minds around the globe, a company can develop products and ideas it could never have dreamed of had it hunkered down in one country, surrounded by one culture.

Artificial intelligence is by far the hottest theme in technology today, and it will be for the next 20 years at least. The competition is fierce. But IBM hasn’t lost its touch when it comes to true innovation and forward thinking.

Ed. Note: The most entertaining and informative 15-minute read of your day. That describes the free daily email edition of The Daily Reckoning. It breaks down the complex worlds of finance, politics and culture to bring you cutting-edge analysis of the day’s most important events. In a way you’re sure to find entertaining… even risqué at times. Click here now to sign up for FREE.

You May Also Be Interested In:

One-third of all Americans have no idea what to do with their 401(k)s after they retire. Today that all ends. I’ll show you exactly what options you have and the pros and cons of each.

Stephen Petranek

Stephen Petranek’s career of over 40 years in the publishing world is marked by numerous prizes and awards for excellent writing on science, nature, technology, politics, economics and more. He has been editor-in-chief of the Miami Herald’s prestigious Sunday magazine, Tropic, and has covered a wide range of topics for Time Inc.’s Life magazine. His...

Related Posts

With midterms now in the books it’s possible in the near future that we see federal reforms supporting marijuana business. And Ray’s found two more plays set to profit from off the rising tide. Let’s dive right in.

As long as markets exist, there will people who try to predict where they are headed. Of course, no one can know for sure. And as Greg Guenthner explains, their prognostications can sometimes do more harm than good. Read on...

The bandwagon’s getting crowded. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and Jefferies have all increased their targets for U.S stocks within the last week. Not a bear in the bunch. The financial media have moved from touting new highs to rooting out the last skeptic standing. Famously bearish analysts are coming around to...

Recently there have been a lot of negative forces beating down the crypto market. But all of these negatives were still not enough to crush crypto's heart. Today, Rich Jacobs explains you shouldn't worry about the crypto market and offers newcomers to the space some great exchanges you can start trading asap.

The theory behind bitcoin is extremely intriguing, but in reality the digital currency is facing political backlash that is making investment a real risk. Ray Blanco, our resident technology expert, breaks down exactly why the controversial digital currency may already be dead in the water.